School food conundrum: PSD juggles what kids should, will eat

Following an assessment of PSD's Child Nutrition department, parents are pushing for quicker changes to the public school district's meal options.

Dec. 3, 2013

Fourth-grader Jasmin Hord, 9, takes a forkfull of salad at Lopez Elementary School on Nov. 19, as CSU researchers from the Food Science and Nutrition Department conducted a wellness research project called Fuel for Fun, measuring plate waste at four PSD schools. The pink paper on Hord's tray is an plate waste assessment tag, where researchers write what food the student gets and then what they leave behind. / V. Richard Haro/The Coloradoan

Child Nutrition at a glance

• The enterprise entity that serves PSD meals spent about $7.4 million and made roughly $7.58 million in school year 2011-12. In the 2012-13 school year, Child Nutrition’s expenses were roughly $7.66 million with $7.12 million in revenues, resulting in a $537,446 loss. • The average cost to make each meal is $2.96, while federal meal reimbursements range from 28 cents to $2.93. For example, Child Nutrition may spend 25 cents on a piece of fruit but receive 6 cents in reimbursements. Breakfasts served2008-09: 258,222 2009-10: 292,518 2010-11: 381,136 2011-12: 493,181 2012-13: 506,820 Secondary/elementary lunches served2008-09: 1,844,518 (total lunches) 2009-10: 701,476/1,116,534*2010-11: 730,340/1,158,470 2011-12: 773,510/1,182,103 2012-13: 766,844/1,110,510 *First year ninth grade moved to high school/open campus Information: PSD Child Nutrition

USDA Farm to School census results

• The USDA surveyed more than 13,000 public school districts nationwide to see how many use local products in its first-ever Farm to School census, released earlier this fall. Here’s a snapshot of the results: • In Colorado, 163 of 179 public school districts completed the census. Of those, 75 districts are bringing farm goods to schools. • Colorado school districts that bought local products in the 2011-12 school year spent an estimated $73.8 million on school food, with about $12.2 million of that directed locally. Sixty-three percent of these districts said they would buy more local foods in the future. • What are they buying? Vegetables, 34 percent; fruit, 32 percent; fluid milk, 21 percent; meat/poultry, 15 percent; dairy products (other than milk), 12 percent. • Poudre School District’s Child Nutrition’s top local foods in 2011-12 were apples, lettuce, peaches, melons and tomatoes. • In the 2012-13 school year, Child Nutrition spent $336,674 on Colorado produce and food products. That accounts for roughly 9 percent of approximately $3.67 million in food expenses, compared to Boulder Valley School District’s 25-30 percent of its $1.6 million food budget, according to the Boulder Daily Camera. • Child Nutrition Director Craig Schneider said his department has staff on the Farm to School task force and local Food Cluster to partner with providers to get “even more” local foods into schools. Information: Colorado school district census report via http://bit.ly/usdacolocensus.

On the web

Click this story at Coloradoan.com to view a video and photo slide show depicting CSU researchers’ November plate waste study, conducted at Lopez Elementary.

Prismatic Services recommendations at a glance

• Offer breakfast in any school with students who are eligible for free/reduced meals, consider expanding breakfast-in-the-classroom programs and publicize the breakfast program. • Encourage kids to drink more water. Students are allowed to use water fountains during lunch but have no alternative to milk in cafeterias. Some schools, like Lesher Middle School, have installed water fountains with easily accessible spouts to fill water bottles, among other initiatives. • Adopt a recess-before-lunch policy. Some PSD schools follow this schedule, with parents reporting their kids eat more after playing than eating and rushing to recess after. District leaders told Board of Education members in September a full analysis regarding this proposal could be completed in the 2014-15 school year. • Expand information provided to stakeholders regarding additives, preservatives and other ingredients. Child Nutrition plans to launch this spring an online database with nutritional/ingredient info for the more than 200 items served in PSD schools. • To read the full report, visit http://bit.ly/Prismaticassessment.

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It’s lunchtime at Lopez Elementary, where fourth-graders shuffle quickly through the line, plucking strawberries, pineapple chunks and baby carrots from the salad bar before paying at the register.

They plop down at one of several tables, chatter excitedly between bites and hustle outside for recess. Their food doesn’t disappear nearly as quickly as they do.

Thirty-one pink and purple trays are left behind. Most opened milk cartons — even the chocolate variety — are left nearly full. Green apples are left either untouched or missing a single bite. Another tray has what appears to be an intact serving of fried rice and an egg roll.

Balancing the healthy foods that kids should eat with what they actually will eat is a monumental task, as most parents can attest. It’s a daily challenge for Poudre School District’s Child Nutrition department, which makes its money from customers who — in most cases — don’t have to buy its meals.

“(PSD) has 27,000 kids, and everyone has their own tastes,” Child Nutrition Director Craig Schneider said.

What's tossed aside

Colorado State University researcher Stephanie Smith and her team want to know what kids don’t eat.

Four times this year, they’ll set up a table in cafeterias at Beattie, Bennett, Lopez and Tavelli elementary schools. Using pink checklists affixed to trays, they record what and how much food students take before and after lunch.

The last of four food waste studies is scheduled for April, after which Smith’s team will analyze data. For now, they’ve drawn anecdotal conclusions:

To no one’s surprise, pizza is really popular. Students typically eat their entrees, which in PSD range from veggie paella to corn dogs and Asian rice bowls. Fruit is ignored more often if not cut into smaller slices. And elementary-age kids waste less than middle schoolers.

The waste study is also linked to an existing program funded by a federal grant and adapted by CSU researchers, including Smith and Leslie Cunningham-Sabo, an assistant professor in CSU’s department of Food Science and Human Nutrition.

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In the program, students at four Thompson School District schools and four PSD schools — Beattie, Bennett, Lopez and Tavelli — participate in produce tastings and cooking classes featuring Colorado ingredients. They also periodically wear pedometers to monitor movement and learn new games to promote active play.

Aims are to reduce child obesity rates by increasing adventuresome eating, preference for fruits and vegetables and physical activity, along with improving the quality of meals families make together.

Moms typically stayed at home before World War II, reducing the need for convenience foods. But as more women entered the workforce in the 1960s, packaged foods gained popularity. That’s led to at least one generation of parents whose cooking skills fall short of their predecessors, Cunningham-Sabo said, and greater necessity today to spend more on ready-made and restaurant foods.

And while there’s not a direct correlation, Cunningham-Sabo isn’t surprised by today’s “obesigenic environment.” In recent years, Colorado’s national ranking for childhood obesity rates dramatically worsened, falling from third among states to 23rd.

This is one reason school meals are under the microscope. Public schools, almost more than parents, are responsible for what kids eat — especially considering the thousands of students eligible for free and reduced-price meals who consume most of their daily calories at school.

“Schools really have the potential to influence their eating habits,” said Cunningham-Sabo, whose hope is to continue the Fuel for Fun program in local schools after its federal grant funding runs out in five years.

Assessing the goods

After a failed first attempt to woo a contractor, PSD Child Nutrition paid North Carolina-based Prismatic Services $34,750 to evaluate its culinary offerings and support system. Completed in June, the assessment recommended improvements for the department it said “excels at providing a variety of menu choices and fresh fruit and vegetable offerings at all grade levels.”

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Among recommendations are decreasing additives and preservatives to rid PSD food products of things such as sodium benzate, MSG and high fructose corn syrup. Schneider said the department has and will continue to replace items with higher-quality substitutes, such as swapping processed fajita meat with chicken.

Child Nutrition will develop plans to decrease specific additives but hasn’t announced hard deadlines, which has concerned some on the parent-led School Nutrition Action Counsel. SNAC leaders say the department can’t rely on companies such as Pillsbury, which supplies mini pancakes, to make changes they’d like to see happen quickly.

Schneider said it can take months to research, budget for, test and replace products in what are essentially 50 PSD restaurants on tight schedules to get hundreds, if not thousands of customers, through their lines each day.

Its salad bars offer at least nine produce options daily. There are no longer fast food vendors or deep-fat fryers in schools, as was the case five years ago.

SNAC is fully behind the launch of an online database with ingredient/nutrition information for the more than 200 items on PSD school menus. Parents have been able to see such details in person, but this makes the information more accessible, Schneider said. A target release for the database is this spring.

As per Prismatic’s suggestion, Child Nutrition also plans to update and improve its menu options. This means tweaking current recipes and using more local products in scratch cooking, for which there’s no agreed-upon definition among school districts, health experts, parents or education officials.

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PSD students are exposed to things such as homemade granola and starfruit in taste tests and cafeterias, but parents argue this isn’t enough to meet their standards. They’ve long advocated for a “paradigm shift” that doesn’t mean eliminating pizza but involves making recipes in house with a shorter list of easily pronounced ingredients.

“We want a systematic overhaul, not a piecemeal attempt to eliminate certain products,” said mother and SNAC member Mary Van Buren. She and others point to districts such as Boulder Valley and Eagle County in Vail, Superintendent Sandra Smyser’s former district, as those to imitate.

Those districts offer three to four daily entree choices, compared to PSD’s three in elementary, 7-8 in middle and 9-10 in high schools. SNAC parents say one problem lies in “pitting” healthy options like a chef salad against cheese pizza.

Schneider maintains the district strives to provide myriad healthy options but must also consider what students like to eat to keep the business in the black. High school students can leave campus to visit favorites McDonald’s and Sonic, which are next door to Fort Collins High.

“No menu can meet the needs of all families, but we are constantly making changes to provide as many students with healthy school meals as possible,” he said in an email.